Category: I care about…

Camino 1.1 Alpha 2 sucks in Firefox 2 features

From the release notes:

Camino 1.1 Alpha 2 is a heavily-updated version of the only native Mac OS X browser using Mozilla.org’s Gecko HTML rendering engine. Notable improvements include enhanced tabbed browsing (“single window mode”), integration with the Mac OS X spell-checking system, detection of RSS/Atom feeds, an improved design for the “blocked pop-up” notification, enhanced options for cookies and downloads, and a resizable search field in the toolbar. This release also includes enhancements in speed, security, and rendering accuracy brought by version 1.8.1 of the Gecko rendering engine.

Note that Camino 1.1 Alpha 2 is in the “alpha” stage, which means it is still under active development. We feel that it is usable on a day-to-day basis and is a large improvement over Camino 1.0, but you may still experience bugs and some functionality may not work entirely as intended. The goal of this early release is to demonstrate the team’s progress and to allow users to report problems early in the development cycle.

Camino 1.1 Alpha 2 shares the same code base as Firefox 2.0, both being based on version 1.8.1 of Gecko, and thus shares many of the security fixes and Gecko improvements that are in that version of Firefox.

Finally we’ll see real session saving, better tab behavior, feed detection and integration with Keychain for password saving. This is in addition to the integration that Camino already supports for the Apple Address Book.

There’s still no support for Firefox Add-ons and it’s unlikely that we’ll see any in the future, but the Camino 1.1 release, built on top of Firefox 2, is starting to shape up nicely.

Mac Mash Pit/CocoaDevHouse tomorrow at Obvious Corp

Mash Pit logoJust in case you’re still in town and your fingers are itchin’ to push some pixels or get some code out, tomorrow there’ll be a Mac Mash Pit at Obvious Corp’s offices in South Park from noon till late afternoon. If you’ve got an hour or two to spare, it’ll be a great chance to meet the folks behind ODEO and Twitter and to get a little hacking done.

Rumor has it that Larry from Ma.gnolia will also be there as well as R. Tyler Ballance from the infamous Bleep Software and Blake Burris, the host, from CocoaRadio.

What’s a Mash Pit? Well, historically they’ve been day long events getting together multi-disciplinary and talented folks to work on projects that focus on problems described in human terms, like, how can you make it easier for folks to send contact info to each other. And so on. Recently, Mash Pits have become more theme-driven, with a number of OpenID Mash Pits popping up. So, it only seemed appropriate that while MacWorld was going on to bring the event to Mac developers and designers.

Hope to see you there tomorrow!

ZDNet calls 2007 the year of URL-based identity

In its 2007 predictions, Identity World suggests that URL-based identities will take the alpha geek world by storm. I couldn’t agree more:

URL-based identity begins a cycle of real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek communities.

URL-based identity overcame many technical and interoperability hurdles in 2006, and got key buy-in from developing communities. 2007 will see the early incarnations of this technology begin a cycle of significant and real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek worlds.

I’ve started collecting resources on OpenID over on Ma.gnolia and imagine that in a year’s time, these sources will tell the story of how OpenID, like Firefox, rose from the shadows of former monolithic and proprietary endeavors to become the preferred and predominant open source, decentralized solution for representing oneself on the web. Truly there’s much work to be done and that’s what makes it so existing and worthwhile — it’s young enough and simple enough to still reflect the needs of the individuals whom it serves.

I’ll be writing about this more soon I hope, but I think Identity World has done a group job with their predictions. Now if only ZDNet would follow the advice of their own sages!

SiliconHappyDevHouse 14 + TechnoPoliticsCamp

SiliconHappyDevHouse 14

In case you’ve not heard or been before, the fourteenth classic SHDH will be taking place this weekend (tomorrow) at David Weekly’s SuperHappyFunHouse in Hillsborough, CA. Geektivities start at 1pm and last post-BBQ to 1am.

Oh, and don’t forget! Sunday at the Open Source Application Foundation at 543 Howard St, Todd Davies is putting on Technology and Politics Camp, a BarCamp derivative, billed as “a hands-on day of networking, brainstorming, and planning for organizations working at the intersection of politics and the Internet (or media in general)”.

Would you like Google Java with that?

Google has open sourced its Google Web Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 license. This is great news for Java-based web developers… but for other folks who prefer PHP and Rails, I’m not sure what to make of it. I do have to admit, their announcement and all the pieces of it make for a great example of a textbook launch of a new open source initiative.

Another Flocker flies the coop

New Flockstar Swag

Word came out that Flock Community Ambassador Will Pate will be flying the coop and moving to a part time contract position, handing over much of the community management to Evan Hamilton.

Although Teh Flock claims support by such personalities as Borat (no comment), plans for the fabled One Dot Oh (so called Euphonia) remain obscure at best.

And while the latest nightlies suggest that there’s certainly been work going on behind the scenes, it’s hard to get a sense for where the product direction and vision are coming from.

In talking to Will, it seems the new CEO, Shawn Hardin, who took over from Bart Decrem in November, is taking his time to examine the environment and consider a path forward.

I’ve not yet had a chance to talk to Shawn about his plans, but I do hope that, with all the turmoil and turnover that Flock’s seen since its launch, he’s able to set a clear course and deliver on the promise and potential of the social browser.